What exactly does anyone - who isn't a member of UKIP or openly a supporter - have to gain by saying "UKIP isn't racist" at this juncture? Farage is clearly a massive racist, and every time one of his crowd of cretins opens their mouth you start to wonder if he isn't in fact the least racist member of his whole party.

What exactly does anyone - who isn't a member of UKIP or openly a supporter - have to gain by saying "UKIP isn't racist" at this juncture?

Because their immigration policies are aligned with anywhere from half to a quarter of the population and the "Fuck me, we're all just a massive bunch of racists" option isn't a popular one with certain think tanks and social scientists.

In the ghettos themselves (I work in one, Butetown in Cardiff Bay, formerly 'Tiger Bay') the assimilation argument happens within the communities and quite often between generations. This is a more interesting and aposite place for it to happen, and it is the younger generations who are the more radical, and recent immigrants, from say Somalia and Yemen, are dealing with some of the same shit they dealt with where they came from.

their new policy on blocking HIV positive people from entering the UK reminds me of this clip from Children Of Men

In fact it wouldn't surprise me if their party political broadcasts looked something like this, esp. given the fear of Ebola spreading and the picture painted by the media of the swathes of welfare leeches and NHS tourists massed at Calais.

I was right, sadly. The Euro elections were not a one off, and I do think this will be reflected in a general election. And even if it is not quite I will add:

1) The idea that the SNP/Labour dominance in Scotland is a reflection of the death of Scottish conservatism is wrong: if you look at general election results in the last two decades, the Tories haven't won, but they've been second in many constituencies, and often not that far behind. So my contention was that in an indepedent Scotland, there is no reason to write off a Scottish Conservative (non-Tory) revival in a decade or two, and therefore the vote was not (ultimately) about party politics.

2) The idea that a UKIP defeat in a general election, that is if they got no MPs, would be irrelevant if they came second in safe Labour or Tory seats, smashing the traditional opposition. I think that would be very worrying.

Also, the other night, after finishing Charles Moore's Thatcher biography, the whole thing came to me in an early morning dream. What is UKIP (now)? Taking into account its libertarian, anti-European, anti-intervensionist stance? Ultra-Thatcherite? Well, Thatcher was not against welfare on principle, she had some sympathy for Beveridge. Also, UKIP seem to be anti-Atlantacist. Who was more pro-America and pro-NATO than Thatcher? (She would not have been pro-Putin, like Farage clearly is.) It didn't stack up...but then. Of course. They are Powell-ite. UKIP are the party of Enoch Powell, in every respect, from his early adoption of free-market ideas to his latent racism to his later incarnation in the Ulster Unionists.

This should be the way the Tories and Labour attack UKIP. Except that Powell popularised a trashy racism and jingoism in the British working class psyche. We are seeing the fruit of that now.

Sorry: forgot to add: Powell was deeply suspicious of America, even in his last ditch paranoia about American interests on Irish territory. Thatcher was less pro-Unionist than anti-IRA, which is a bit different.

Also: Powell was a soft anti-semite, which also chimes with UKIP's rogue troops, and divorces them from Thatcher's internationalist neoliberalism, and her adored Jewish Finchley constituency.

Huh? Why the regret? It's an interesting and informative post. I know sod all about British political history and find these kinds of threads and these kinds of posts really useful, just as you do with CrowleyHead's potted socio-cultural history of rap.

I don't pay much attention to the flavor of the month political story, but anti-immigration in America is a movement. Its been around since the independence of the country, it never goes away, it only goes up and down in popularity. It changes shape with the economic uncertainty or cultural identity and partisan positions but its just always there.

I just remembered about my UKIP premonition this evening its from 2008. i picked it up in the aether with my psychic anttenae

Gary Mutt is in the Star and Garter sitting in front of a pint of warm bitter, picking at his pack of pork scratchings. He gazes idly at the pictures behind the bar; Barbara Windsor, the Two Ronnies, Clive of India, Princess Diana, Bomber Harris, Paul Gascoigne, a grim faced Geoffery Boycott, Terry Butcher with bloody bandages wrapped tight around his head like a casualty of war, Cliff Richard in tennis whites. Icons of Englishness. He takes a sip of his bitter and feels proud.
"England will never die you horrible cunts" he bellows. The barman coughs softly and polishes a pint glass with a grubby beer towel.
A 14 inch television screen splutters on a wall bracket in a corner of the room. Only Albion City still has television. John Bull, in one of his more celebrated speeches, declared that if Englishness means anything it means hanging on to your traditions. The BBC broadcast John Bull's addressess to the nation and repeats of Coronation Street, Emerdale Farm, old episodes of The Goodies, Hale and Pace and classic sitcoms such as Are You Being Served, Upstairs, Downstairs, Love Thy Neighbour and Men Behaving Badly.
The television screen is showing footage of the 1966 world cup final.
Gary mouths the words alongside the commentator, words seared onto the heart of every true Englishman
"they think it's all over"
he rises to his feet, mimes kicking a football into the corner of the net
"IT IS NOW YOU FUCKING KRAUTY CUNTS"
raises his arms aloft in triumph and embarks in a victory lap around the pub, arms spread outwards in imitation of a Spitfire flying over the Channel.
"you can take away our red phone boxes, you can decomission our double-decker buses and auction off our manor houses but youll never take our pride
In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund
In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund
In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund, In-Ger-Lund
In-Ger-Lund, IN--GER--LUUND"

I don't think the killers are/were particularly concerned about good race relations in France (quite the opposite, probably).

The whole reaction to such a horrific tragedy (and one as equally horrific as any act of terrorism, no more or no less) is so depressingly predictable, from the explosion of racism from every corner, to repainting the dubious cartoons Charlie Hebdo published as heroic free speech, rather than a game of brinksmanship that went tragically wrong. What were they saying that was so important that it was worth getting killed for, ffs (and they knew that was a possibility from previous events)?

Hmm. I've seen a number of responses that focus on the inevitability, sooner or later, of some sort of violent repercussion to this sort of satire. Which may be factually true, of course, but there's a danger here of making it sound like "Well if you put your hand in a fire, what do you expect to happen?". By concentrating on the "inevitable" nature of an attack like this, you in a sense exculpate the culprits. The moral onus is shifted to non-Muslims not to give offence, rather than on Islamists not to react with murder.

It is also, in an very subtle, bien-pensant kind of way, racist, because it denigrates the moral agency of Muslims.